


Sanctuary [After the Battle]

by the_afterlight



Category: Final Fantasy X, Power Rangers Jungle Fury
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-31
Updated: 2010-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:45:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_afterlight/pseuds/the_afterlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the latest threat to Ocean Bluff vanquished, Casey starts to clean up Jungle Karma Pizza when their newest allies drop in for a visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanctuary [After the Battle]

**Author's Note:**

> So this, realistically, should be part of a longer story. Even more realistically, it should be the _end_ of a larger story. That larger story, which explains how Casey and Lulu meet, and how Seymour, Sin, Yuna, and the Guardians all come over to Earth, will probably never be written. ... Except for how it probably will.
> 
> This is for the A Ficathon Walks Into a Bar challenge. My prompt was "Casey walks into a bar and meets Wakka". ... So it's a pizza parlor, and it's Wakka who walks in, not Casey. I still think it counts. ;)
> 
> The title comes from the Utada Hikaru song, from Kingdom Hearts II.

Three days after the final battle with Sin, Casey was sweeping broken glass off the floor of Jungle Karma Pizza. There'd been no time before, as everyone had been too busy celebrating _not dying horrible deaths_. In fact, most people still were out celebrating, but Casey had figured that someone should get back to work, and if someone had to, it might as well be him.

Besides, people would stop celebrating eventually, and they would inevitably want their overpriced jungle-themed pizzas when they did, and Casey was damned if he wasn't going to make sure they'd be ready.

So, there Casey was, sweeping broken glass up off of the floor, remnants of the battle the Rangers had fought there against the third (or was it fourth?) wave of Sinspawn. RJ was upstairs, reestablishing contact with the rest of Earth's Ranger teams and assuring them that, yes, they could stand down, as the apocalypse had been stopped at Ocean Bluff. ... Again. Casey wasn't absolutely certain, but he was pretty sure most Ranger teams only had to deal with one, maybe two (or three) world-ending apocalypses, and this was their fourth or fifth, at least.

"Apocalypsi?" Casey wondered allowed, tidying the glass up into a dustpan and moving over to dump it in the trashcan. "Is there even a plural for apocalypse?"

The bell above the door jangled, once, as the door was pushed open, swinging inwards to hang on broken hinges rather than closing behind the people walking in. "I'm telling ya, Lu, there's nothin' to worry about! If there's any Sinspawn left in town anyway, wouldn't they have all been, like, sucked up in that portal thing you were telling me about?"

"Wakka, I was saying -- Hello, Casey." Lulu nodded in Casey's direction, and he gave her a little wave. "I was saying that they _should_ have been. Not _were_. We don't know anything about this for certain, other than that Sin is finally gone." Wordlessly, she gestured at one of the least-damaged tables, which Casey had already matched to a few of the least-damaged chairs, and Casey nodded, so Lulu directed Wakka to one of the chairs while she took another. "How is Tidus? After all, it was his father..."

Wakka shook his head. "Not good. I guess he's worried about going back to Spira. Thinks he might fade away when he gets there, 'cause the Fayth are gonna stop dreaming him or something like that."

"It's not unreasonable," Lulu pointed out. "When the Bahamut Fayth explained his origins, I think we were all... surprised. That combined with the uncertainty of our travel to Earth is enough to make me concerned, as well. Casey, do stop working and sit down with us?"

Casey laughed, but nodded. "Sure," he replied. "Just let me grab a pitcher of soda." As he walked over the soda fountain -- which had, miraculously, escaped any damage in the fight -- a thought occurred to him. "Hey, do you know if you need to avoid, like, caffeine or anything? Do you guys drink any caffeinated stuff on Spira?"

"What's caffeine?" Wakka asked. "Some kinda drink thing?"

Lulu shook her head. "A fairly mild stimulant," she told Wakka. "It's fine, Casey, although probably not too much of it? I had a coffee yesterday, and it had... considerably more caffeine than anything we have on Spira."

"I'll just grab some Sprite, then. Probably safer." Casey filled a pitcher and grabbed three glasses, bringing them over to the table. "So you're Wakka? Lulu's told me a lot about you."

Wakka shrugged. "Casey, right? Lu says you're some kinda... superhero?" The word was clearly odd in Wakka's mouth. Casey remembered having to explain what it meant to Lulu. "Thanks for your help with Sin. Lu was saying that you guys took care of the Sinspawn while we were inside of it."

Casey poured them each a glass of Sprite from the pitcher and passed them around. "Sorry it's a bit warm, our ice machine's still broken. And yeah, it was nothing. It's kinda what we do. I mean, we don't actually have our Ranger powers anymore, but we're still better-able to handle than kind of stuff than civilians, y'know?"

"Casey and his friends have shown themselves to be quite accomplished martial artists, in fact," Lulu interjected. "As I understand, you're all masters with your particular school?"

Casey flushed and took a gulp of his soda. "Yeah, we all- Being Rangers, I think, kinda gave us an advantage there. I looked it up, and I've got the fastest promotion from cub to master in the history of Pai Zhua. No way could I have done that if I weren't a Ranger."

"I wouldn't sell yourself short." RJ leaned against the doorjamb leading into the kitchen, one eyebrow cocked. "The Power just helps out with what's already there. You still had to do all the work." Casey's flush deepened. RJ grabbed a glass from the counter as he walked by, grabbed a chair, and sat down on it, backwards, at the table. "Nice to see you again, Lulu. This is Wakka? I'm RJ. Nice to meet you. Sorry the place is such a mess, we're still cleaning up from the apocalypse."

"It's quite all right." Lulu leaned back in her chair, smiling softly. "We've lived through a couple of our own, so we know how it is."

Wakka spoke up again. "So, can either of you explain to me exactly what happened? Lu's tried, but it's just not making much sense to me."

Casey and Lulu shared a laughing look, while RJ nodded, grinned, and leaned forward. "Okay, so, you know, obviously, that there are different worlds. Universes, we call them, where things work differently than they do the next universe over. This Seymour guy Lulu was telling us about? He did something that punched a hole from your universe over to ours, and Sin decided to follow him through..."

Rikku and Yuna wandered in a few moments later, with someone Casey could only assume was Tidus, and Theo and Lily both came out of the kitchen, presumably having come through the back door. Soon everyone was gathered around, telling stories of their recent battles, telling stories of _old_ battles -- when Jarrod and Camille showed up and Camille showed off her battle suit, Tidus tripped over himself and nearly killed himself on a chunk of glass. When Casey got up to start sweeping again, Yuna insisted on coming over to help, and Lily decided to take a turn in the kitchen and salvage what she could for some pizzas.

In the city outside, people celebrated the saving of the world with loud music, parties, drinking, and generally raucous behaviour. Casey knew that, and he didn't really mind.

This, though, Casey reflected, was his kind of celebration: family, his and Lulu's, sitting down, sharing laughter, finding relief that it's finally over.

Over, that is, until the next time the apocalypse threatened. But no matter what came next, they'd be ready, and Casey would fight with all of his strength, until his last breath, to reach another moment just like this.


End file.
